Line launches its own taxi service to rival Uber

Line Taxi will be available in Tokyo in its initial release, before it expands nationwide

Asia has been a key driver of Uber's growth in recent years, especially India, which is the company's largest market outside of the United States. Recently, though, it's started running into some major issues in the region, partially due to some self inflicted issues, like insufficient background checks, but also the typical regulatory hurdles it goes through everywhere.

Now the company is about to face big headwinds in yet another country, this time in the form of big time competition.

Mobile messaging giant Line announced on Wednesday that it is launching its own taxi app in Tokyo, called Line Taxi. The service will allow users to call taxis directly from the main Line app; no external apps have to be installed in order to use it, and users can pay within the app by using the recently launched Line Pay platform.

Line Taxi will first be available in the Tokyo metropolitan area starting Wednesday, and a nationwide release is planned for the "near future."  Line is partnering with Nihon Kotsu to give users access to 3,340 cabs throughout the Tokyo area for the initial release, and plans to up that number to 23,000 in the next phase.

The Tokyo-based Line has also been one of the hottest and fastest growing companies in the mobile messaging space, quadrupling its user base in just a few years. Line reached the 100 million mark in March 2011, just ahead of its IPO, and then took nearly another two years to reach 200 million in January of last year. By April of last year, it doubled that number to 400 million.

The company has been growing beyond messaging, though, getting into everything from games, to antivirus software to its aforementioned payments services, and now its own taxi service. It even bought ts own music streaming service last month. 

Line had been planning a $10 billion IPO last year, but scuttled those plans in September.

Uber in Asia

Line's biggest rival in the space is Uber, which launched in Tokyo in 2013, and expanded there in March of last year. 

As I said earlier, Uber has been significantly growing its presence in the region in recent years. In 2013, along with South Korea, Uber expanded to Singapore, Taipei, Dubai, Shanghai and Bangalore. In April of this year came the big one: the company began rolling out its services in Beijing.

It has put a particular focus on India, which earlier this year became Uber's largest global market outside of the United States. 

But things have been teetering in the region recently. 

An incident in New Delhi in December, where a driver allegedly raped a passenger, causing the service to be banned in that city, as well as Hyderabad. The incident led to Uber declaring new safety features and stricter background checks. On top of that Uber’s services were declared illegal in Taiwan.

But, most serious of all, are charges that were leveled at the company by South Korea.

 Travis Kalanick, the founder and CEO of Uber, along with the head of MKKorea, a local rental-car service operator, identified only as Lee, were charged with violating a law that bans rental-car service operations from conducting passenger-transport business using their cars.

These are not frivolous charges either;  Kalanick and Lee could face up to two years in jail if they are found guilty.

(Image source: cdn-stf.line-apps.com)